MSM continue to attack GOP and ignore DNC in Foley affair

From the Washington Post...

A spokeswoman for Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) confirmed yesterday that a former page showed the congressman Internet messages that had made the youth feel uncomfortable with the direction Foley (R-Fla.) was taking their e-mail relationship. Last week, when the Foley matter erupted, a Kolbe staff member suggested to the former page that he take the matter to the clerk of the House, Karen Haas, said Kolbe's press secretary, Korenna Cline....

A source with direct knowledge of Kolbe's involvement said the messages shared with Kolbe were sexually explicit, and he read the contents to The Washington Post under the condition that they not be reprinted. But Cline denied the source's characterization, saying only that the messages had made the former page feel uncomfortable. Nevertheless, she said, "corrective action" was taken. Cline said she has not yet determined whether that action went beyond Kolbe's confrontation with Foley....

Kolbe, the only openly gay Republican in Congress, is retiring at the end of the year.

Note the implied equivocation between an anonymous source and a known source regarding the contents of the emails. Also note the absence of the actual age of this page during the time the emails are received. He's call a "former" page, so all we know is that it's after the time he served as a page. How ABC News got the original emails and IMs that broke the story is an important factor, yet the MSM continue to treat it as insignificant. 

The crux of this story hangs on whether or not the emails themselves were marginally inappropriate or obscene as well as the age of the former page when he received them. Since the age of consent on Washington D.C. is sixteen (a law put in place by a Democrat controlled Congress) one must wonder why then the same people who put in that law seem so overly concerned by suggestive message to people that age or above. If sixteen and seventeen year-olds are in fact children that need to be protected, why have the Democrats then allowed the law in D.C. to leave them unprotected from sexual predators? I seriously doubt Republicans were the ones that wanted the age of consent so low.

Oh, and big surprise here (NOT), from the New York Times...

As word of Representative Mark Foley’s sexually explicit e-mail messages to former pages spread last week, Republican strategists worried — and Democrats hoped — that the sordid nature of the scandal would discourage conservative Christians from going to the polls.

But in dozens of interviews here in southeastern Virginia, a conservative Christian stronghold that is a battleground in races for the House and Senate, many said the episode only reinforced their reasons to vote for their two Republican incumbents in neck-and-neck re-election fights, Representative Thelma Drake and Senator George Allen....

Most of the evangelical Christians interviewed said that so far they saw Mr. Foley’s behavior as a matter of personal morality, not institutional dysfunction. 

All said the question of broader responsibility had quickly devolved into a storm of partisan charges and countercharges. And all insisted the episode would have little impact on their intentions to vote.

By and large Conservative Christians vote based on common sense, not blind, party loyalty. They'll be the first to criticize the GOP when any real negative behavior comes to light. But with the Foley mess, there is no real issue outside of Foley's own personal responsibility (and the possible collusion of Democrats in hiding the facts until a politically opportune time). The lack of comprehension of the principal of personal responsibility would seem to be one of the Democrat's weak points. They're so used to group-think, that they automatically assume no individual can choose to do something outside the "collective". Maybe the DNC should be called the "Borg Party".

I'd say the Democrats' hypocrisy has stirred most Conservatives Christians' anger more that the fact that Foley's a Republican. Of course the NYTs isn't about to note that point, as obvious as it may be.

Posted by Danny Carlton at October 9, 2006 6:47 AM